SETI Researcher Quashes Signal Rumors 379
brainstyle writes "According to Dan Wertheimer of SETI the whole ET signal excitement is more hype than science. I told myself it was in all likelihood nothing special, but I'm still disappointed. Darn."
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
i understand its so very probably not an ET signal...but what if it was?
Unlikely .... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you would probably find that the people who want to find extraterrestrial life really, guinuinely want to find it. They would neither risk being considered cranks by repeatedly saying "found one -- oops, psyche" nor would they willingly participate in a cover up if they did.
A lot of scientists already think of SETI as being a little flaky. Giving people reason to believe that more would be silly.
[ then again, since I can't prove a negative, I can't completely rule out the assertion either. =]
Cover-up conspiracy theories (Score:3, Insightful)
Y'know, I get really tired of all this bullshit I hear. It's bad enough to hear this bullshit when I interact with "normal" people -- do we really need this on slashdot as well?
Look everyone, making any sort of contact with an alien civilization would be such an incredible discovery, there's no way the government could ever keep it quiet. Christ, they can't even keep China from obtaining detailed blueprints on every single nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. So how are these nincompoops going to keep a bunch of scientists -- who have given up the chance to be reputable, respected, and published for the chance to discover life -- quiet? I don't care what kind of blackmail or torture or whatever technique they used -- there is no way they could keep all the scientists quiet. What's to stop a terminally ill SETI researcher from spilling the beans?
Guys, just relax. There is no conspiracy. The reason SETI has to vehemently deny shit like this is because the media blows everything completely out of proportion. They are trying to contain the situation before everyone picks it up and starts running with it. Occam's razor and all that jazz.
GMD
Re:Conspiracy (Score:1, Insightful)
The point is that nothing has been interprited that way because aliens aren't among us. If they were, those people would find SOMETHING in those texts to justify them, and "prove" that they were right all along.
Re:Conspiracy (Score:3, Insightful)
FYI, incidentally, Kabbalah isn't a book. The Zohar is the main Kabbalist text. (And, as it happens, deals with all sorts of angels, seraphs and other extra-terrestrial creatures.)
Re:what are you looking for (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you hoping they find?
That's actually a very relevant question which hits many UFO believers right in the scrotum.
In my experience 75% are looking for "Shiny happy aliens holding hands", who will of course descend upon us soon, revealing mystical knowledge that will take us, as a species, to the next level of evolution, relieving the believer from his job at K-Mart.
The other 25% believe in horrible, scary aliens, who will of course descend upon us, wreaking havoc and mayhem and instituting a new reign of terror, relieving the believer from his job at K-Mart.
Re:Don't be too quick to judge! (Score:1, Insightful)
The thing that gets me is he keeps going on and on about the 4 corners of his cube. Last time I checked a cube had 8 corners, 4 corners is just a lowly time square...
Re:Don't be too quick to judge! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Although (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat This is (Score:5, Insightful)
Only one thing I always say about this: It's a very naive to assume aliens are smart. We're not all that bright by the standards we seem to expect of aliens, and we used to be a lot dumber. We're just as likely to detect an early industrial civlization by their sitcom broadcasts as we are to detect some hyperadvanced godlike race beaming lasers at us accross the galaxy.
Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat This is (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps 1420 is the start-of-message signal?
Realistically speaking, if I took a reading of a signal that always started the same way and behaved the same way no matter when I started, I would suspect an artifact of the equipment or software.
Possible explanation and some questions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if you look on this site [64.233.167.104] the 1400-1700 Mhz range is used by radio astronomy and weather satellites. So with that 3 questions:
Now I'm probably wrong on all of this. Which is why I love
Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat This is (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that the whole point of FM? (i.e. frequency modulation... varying the frequency to encode data?)
Couldn't it be a signal from a stationary source that's being modulated as a carrier wave? Think outside your tiny box once in a while...
I remember something similar (Score:3, Insightful)
In the end it proved to be nothing.
But what if this isn't ?
Re:From the horse's (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider for a moment there may be an alien project on that planet, and some guy struggling for budget to keep his signal transmitter running and you don't have all the time in the world, maybe they had an equipment upgrade between your scans, or a change in transmission theories. Maybe the have detected methane and oxygen in our atmosphere after extensive surveys of their sky and are targeting us with a signal.
My point is not that this is likely, but given this is the only signal and we don't know much about most of the factors in Drake's equation and the anthropic principal is at work here thare are many reasons for *showing a little bit of enthusiasm* and checking out this signal one more time, and not taking your sweet time to do it.
Re:From the horse's (Score:3, Insightful)
There are about a zillion research projects that compete for a scarce resource, telescope time. Each telescope has a time assignment committee, that will decide who will be able to point the telescope. SETI is the last in the list. So you should send your request to Arecibo, not to SETI.